A recent bill in Spain proposes to give apes rights along the lines of humans. It has prompted much discussion on whether DNA similarities and connections guarantee animals equal rights. If the bill passes it would make torture, medical experiments on and the killing of apes illegal.
This makes some sense, since there is an argument that animals should not be submitted to torture or harmful medical experiments. The problem with passing bills such as this is where does it stop? Will protection have to be granted to other animals? One of the arguments to pass this bill is that apes have feelings and show emotion. However, cows can experience pleasure and fear as well, so does that mean we owe them Cow Rights? Clearly there is a difference between the two species and the situations, but an argument can be made for basically any creature that they deserve rights protection.
I don’t think a topic such as this needs to be legislated upon by a central government beyond a general guidance for all animals: prohibition of torture, cruel experiments and senseless killing. This provides a clear baseline that calls for the respect of living creatures and outlaws harm of them beyond self-defence and consumptive purposes.
In response to the widespread increase in knife crime, the Devon and Cornwall police have instituted “Operation Goodnight", a new curfew program that will allow anyone younger than 16 found on the street after 9 PM to be “removed." Children under 10 will be sent home after 8 PM.
Now, no one is saying that it’s a good idea for 9 year olds to be running around late at night without their parents, and the rise in knife crime is certainly troubling. But is treating all kids who are socializing in the evening as criminals really the way to change a culture or to discourage them from behaving badly? Do we really want to live in a society where 16-year-olds who walk home with friends or buy a soda after an 8PM movie are looking over their shoulders, worried they’ll be shooed home?
After all, in the summer it’s still light out at 9 PM, and realistically, many schoolchildren with time off will not be headed to bed for a few more hours. But that is not even really the issue. The question is, should the government be deciding what bed-time is, or should the onus be on parents? A mentality that emphasizes the government over the family, and in which all youth are potential criminals will do little to help what is, at its root, a cultural problem.
Yesterday, the should-have-been scandal of President Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping program reached its sad and anticlimactic conclusion. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed easily. It retroactively legalizes the warrant-less eavesdropping on US citizens that has occurred under the Bush administration since 2005. The act effectively grants immunity to the telecom companies who complied with the President’s program in spite of explicit privacy laws designed to prevent precisely such intrusion, and those whose privacy was intruded upon will no longer be able to sue the companies that handed over their data.
According to the previous FISA act, the president had to seek approval in a FISA court before proceeding with wiretapping. That court has granted almost every single warrant it has been asked for; the question, then, is why the administration decided it was necessary to skip that crucial step. The administration has not yet produced a single piece of evidence that this program actually helped to prevent any attacks. Moreover, the very Congress that is voting to legalize the whole affair has not been given details regarding exactly what transpired or why the government failed to get the easily-acquired warrants; they are voting to look the other way without even knowing exactly what they are condoning.
The only thing more frightening than this amendment is the lack of a public outcry against it. The move of the government to legalize warrant-less wiretapping should be a big deal, but it barely seems to be causing ripples. After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin was asked whether the new government was a monarchy or a republic; his immortal response was "A republic, if you can keep it." Here’s hoping that the American public wakes up and regains the nerve to do what it takes to keep it.
This week the House of Lords began debating the increase of the pre-charge detention limit to 42 days. As the reign of the present government, the UK is increasingly coming to resemble a police state. The rights of British citizens are being eroded and the new counter-terrorism bill is a clear example of this.
Terrorism is a threat but the government is taking counter-terrorism to an unwarranted and extreme level. There are no safeguards to protect innocent people. If this bill is implemented, anyone could be accused of being a suspected terrorist and, consequently, not see daylight for 6 weeks. Such a state of affairs is morally wrong.
Adding to these concerns, the government has revealed that the increase is not actually necessary at the moment. However, it has stated that the 42-day detention limit may be "needed" in the future. Yet this is not an adequate reason to implement the bill. It is unacceptable that the government are giving the police the authority to detain any citizen on suspicion of suspected terrorism without any hard evidence and when there is no immediate threat.
It is widely assumed in Westminster that the government's main objective with 42-days (how exactly did they arrive at that number?) was to make the Conservatives look "soft on terror". Such an abuse of power is shameful.
Facebook is causing trouble left and right these days.
Londoner Mathew Firsht is suing a former friend for creating a damaging false profile that revealed private details and wrongly indicated that Firsht was gay. Another woman, Kerry Harvey, has recently started receiving phone calls from strangers because they saw a fake profile that described her as a prostitute and gave out her private number.
Of interest to us at the Adam Smith Institute among the Facebook scandals is the recent alcohol ban in Torbay due to a "night of mayhem" beach party that is being advertised via Facebook’s event application. When officials caught wind of the event, which has over 7,000 confirmed attendees, they declared that as soon as the location is specified all pubs, bars and retailers in that area will be banned from selling alcohol.
Shutting down a region during the busy summer holiday weekends will be very damaging to business. And it's not just this constraint on trade that is worrisome. Intervention of this scope by the government is unexpected and unwarranted. While there are legitimate concerns for safety, forcing businesses to shut down a key aspect of their commerce is not the way to handle it. By all means be prepared to have extra security at hand or keep the number of people at a reasonable capacity, but imposing regulations on businesses that have every right to operate seems an unacceptable form of intervention. It sets a dangerous precedent.
The development of liberties in English law is very much the story of limits being placed upon state power. One element of those liberties is that there should be limits placed on the information which the state can demand from its citizens and keep on its files. ID cards are one major infringement of that principle, and a DNA database is another. The police have been empowered to collect and hold DNA samples from people who have not been convicted of any crime. Even suspicion can be deemed sufficient, and over-zealous police forces have developed the practice of taking DNA samples for quite trivial offences.
Some police officers have said that they wish the DNA database to include as many as possible, and some forces even have DNA samples held on file for thousands of children not even accused, much less convicted, of any crime. Our DNA contains much evidence about our lives, including our vulnerability to specific diseases, and even aspects of personality that is no business of the authorities. The widespread collection and retention of such information is an abuse of state power, and should be stopped. It is part of the creeping erosion of our liberties that police feel entitled to treat citizens as potential criminals, and collect and hold information on innocent people that they have no business with.
It is good for the freedom of individuals if there are strict limits on the information the state is allowed to hold on them.. In the first place it is no business of the state to keep tabs on the private dealings of citizens who have not been charged or convicted of crimes. Secondly, the mere possession of such information is open to abuse by those who have access to it. In the third place, the centralized collection of information is itself a hazard, with the possibility of such information being released inadvertently, or targetted criminally.
The collection of information on ordinary citizens alters the balance between citizen and state, casting the state into a superior, perhaps threatening role, rather than its proper role as our servant. It is there to do our bidding, and should have access to no more information about us than it needs to carry out our mandate. The proposed ID cards with access to vast data records on individuals do not sit easily with a free society. World War II identity cards were abolished postwar precisely because they were felt to be an intolerable intrusion into the lives of free citizens. The same is true today.
Of course the case is made that they are "to fight terrorism," as it is for eroding other liberties. In fact terrorists will equip themselves with forged ID cards as readily as they do with fake passports. ID cards should be seen instead as just another device for government to control the lives of its citizenry, and should be resisted accordingly.
It is an important safeguard against oppressive authority that the state should only act against people suspected of a specific crime. Free societies reject what are called "general warrants," where the state comes fishing to see what wrongdoing it might find. Its searches should be limited to specific offences suspected of being committed by specific persons.
The state always wants to survey everyone in case it can find some offence they might have committed, and liberty is preserved by preventing it from doing so. The police want to stop drivers at random in case any of them are under the influence of drink or drugs; but they are only allowed to stop people who are behaving suspiciously. Similarly with homes or businesses; there must be good cause to suspect specific infringements, not general snooping.
Several recent laws have weakened this protection by, for example, giving numerous bodies including local authorities the power to snoop on actions, correspondence, and communications in case people are transgressing the laws and rules. The position should be re-established that general warrants are not to be tolerated in free societies.
Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers is lobbying for the creation of a 3,000-strong counter-terrorism border force, to be made up of a special branch of uniformed officers.
Somehow, I cannot imagine that this will be a welcome development for travellers. Sure, I want Britain to keep out terrorists, gangsters, drug-thugs and the like. And we have a UK Border Agency already, charged with managing border control, enforcing immigration and customs regulations, and dealing with citizenship and asylum. It's a wide brief, to be sure, but that at least moderates its behaviour. My fear is that when an 'elite' counter-terrorism force gets put in charge, travellers to the UK will be viewed with suspicion as potential terrorists, rather than welcomed with enthusiasm as potential tourists or traders.
I just have this vision of perfectly innocent families who have some glitch on their passport being marched off by heavies in riot gear to be generally inconvenienced and intimidated. When you give exceptional powers to public officials, they do have a habit of using them indiscriminately. Local authorities' use of surveillance against litter-louts and wheelie-bin rule-breakers is an example. But at least local authority officers don't tote Heckler & Koch MP5s.
The law used to recognize the right of individuals to protect themselves and their property from illegal transgression. People who found themselves facing assault or theft were entitled to use what the law called "reasonable force" to resist such infringement of their rights, and to secure the safety of their person and their property.
Recently the determination of the police to exercise a monopoly of violence, coupled with a determination by lawyers and judges to protect those accused, has systematically eroded the common law right of self defence. Those who have apprehended criminals in the act of theft or assault have found themselves arrested for false imprisonment, kidnapping, or assault.
Our right to protect ourselves is surrendered to an impartial authority more likely to exercise dispassionate judgement, provided that it does indeed safeguard our interests. If that authority fails to protect, however, then people have to protect themselves. In undermining that right, recent decisions have also undermined the rule of law and the right to life and property.
A recent 
In response to the widespread increase in knife crime, the Devon and Cornwall police have instituted “Operation Goodnight", a new curfew program that will allow anyone younger than 16 found on the street after 9 PM to be “removed." Children under 10 will be sent home after 8 PM.
Yesterday, the should-have-been scandal of President Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping program reached its sad and anticlimactic conclusion. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed easily. It retroactively legalizes the warrant-less eavesdropping on US citizens that has occurred under the Bush administration since 2005. The act effectively grants immunity to the telecom companies who complied with the President’s program in spite of explicit privacy laws designed to prevent precisely such intrusion, and those whose privacy was intruded upon will no longer be able to sue the companies that handed over their data.
This week the House of Lords began debating the increase of the pre-charge detention limit to 42 days. As the reign of the present government, the UK is increasingly coming to resemble a police state. The rights of British citizens are being eroded and the new counter-terrorism bill is a clear example of this.
Facebook is causing trouble left and right these days.
The development of liberties in English law is very much the story of limits being placed upon state power. One element of those liberties is that there should be limits placed on the information which the state can demand from its citizens and keep on its files. ID cards are one major infringement of that principle, and a DNA database is another. The police have been empowered to collect and hold DNA samples from people who have not been convicted of any crime. Even suspicion can be deemed sufficient, and over-zealous police forces have developed the practice of taking DNA samples for quite trivial offences. 
It is good for the freedom of individuals if there are strict limits on the information the state is allowed to hold on them.. In the first place it is no business of the state to keep tabs on the private dealings of citizens who have not been charged or convicted of crimes. Secondly, the mere possession of such information is open to abuse by those who have access to it. In the third place, the centralized collection of information is itself a hazard, with the possibility of such information being released inadvertently, or targetted criminally.
Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers is lobbying for the creation of a 3,000-strong counter-terrorism border force, to be made up of a special branch of uniformed officers.